Computing systems have become an integral part of life. Businesses and individuals use computer systems and devices, and these computing systems and devices connect over various networks. The data stored or used by those computing systems is usually very important. A business may be able to survive the loss of hardware. However, that same business may not be able to survive a loss of data. In addition, the amount of data used or maintained by an entity or even an individual continually increases over time.
As a result, protecting data is now a fundamental consideration for businesses and individuals or other entities. Data protection systems protect data in various ways. Primarily, data protection systems protect data by making a backup of the data. If a failure or incident occurs in the primary system that affects data, the affected data can be recovered from the backups.
It can be appreciated, however, that backups can require significant storage space for various reasons. For example, the amount of data that is backed up typically grows as new data is generated. In another example, existing data may be changed or modified over time and there may be a desire to maintain a backup of the data at is presently exists as well as a backup of the data as it existed in the past. Some entities may want to have redundant backups of their data. In each of these examples, the storage requirements for backups can be significant and can grow over time. As a result, systems and methods are needed to reduce the storage space required to store backups.